SUM 13/130
O’Brien v Bernard Schulte Shipmanagement (Isle of Man) Limited and
Futuresonic Cleaning Limited
CASE SUMMARY
On 1st July 2014 Deemster Corlett delivered a judgment dealing with six applications in a
personal injury case brought by the Claimant against his employer and a cleaning company
contracted by the employer. The background was an accident at work in 2010 in which the
Claimant alleged that he had slipped and fallen in the lavatories, thereby sustaining injuries.
For reasons which were not explained to the Deemster, the Claimant appears to have taken
no steps to make a claim until very nearly three years from the date of the accident. The
normal rule is that a personal injury claim must be started within three years.
The employer and the cleaning company applied to the court to strike out the claim for
various reasons. The court held that the claim should be struck out principally because:1. the claim against the cleaning company was made outside the three year period and
there was no basis for the court to exercise its discretion under the Limitation Act
1984 to dis-apply that period;
2. the claim against the employer, although started just inside the three year period,
should not be allowed to continue because there had been a series of failures to
comply with the Rules of Court and the court considered that the Claimant should
not be granted relief from the consequences of those failures, particularly when
there had been such an unexplained lengthy delay in even making a written claim to
the employer.
The Deemster also briefly considered the recent English case law dealing with “relief from
sanctions” (the post-Mitchell cases) and noted that the English Rules of Court had been
amended so that Manx and English law were no longer identical. However, the need to
comply with the Rules of Court and the consequences arising from non-compliance were
emphasised.
For further details please refer to the full text of the judgment.